New to SoHo in June

An unprecedented number of British dramas will premiere next month on SoHo, along with another Amazon Prime pick-up, Fleabag.

Patrick Melrose, which stars Benedict Cumberbatch in an adaptation of Edward St. Aubyn’s novels, is a Sky Atlantic-Showtime co-production while CB Strike and Little Women were BBC commissions.

Patrick Melrose is a flamboyant, aristocratic playboy whose adventures span from his ’60s childhood at the hands of abusive parents in the South of France to his debauched adulthood in ’80s New York to his return to sobriety in 2000s Britain.

The five-part series “finally comes to television after spending half a decade in development“, Variety reports.

Not only was the task of translating St. Aubyn’s notoriously beautiful prose to the small screen a massive undertaking, but finding the right vehicle in which to tell the best-selling saga with a cult-like following was important in order to nail the numerous themes and overall tone from the books.

The series premieres this week in the US, where it’s been widely acclaimed, and co-stars Holliday Grainger (The Borgias), Jessica Raine (Fortitude), Indira Varma (Game of Thrones), Hugo Weaving (The Dressmaker), Blythe Danner (Will & Grace) and Allison Williams (Girls).

Grainger also stars in CB Strike, a Robert Galbraith (aka JK Rowling) adaptation starring Tom Burke (The Musketeers) as a war vet-turned-modern detective, while Little Women is a poignant three-part adaptation of the Louisa May Alcott Civil War novel from Call the Midwife creator Heidi Thomas.

Emily Watson (Apple Tree Yard), Dylan Baker (Homeland), Willa Fitzgerald (Bull), Maya Hawke (Stranger Things), Angela Lansbury (Murder, She Wrote) and Sir Michael Gambon (Fortitude) star.

Fleabag is SoHo’s second acquisition of an Amazon Prime original (the first was American Gods).

It stars creator Phoebe Waller-Bridge in a touching comedy-drama about a dry-witted, sexual, angry, porn-watching, grief-ridden woman trying to make sense of the world.

“Fleabag, like Catastrophe before it, is one of the rare half-hours with dramatic elements that doesn’t abuse the percentages by erasing most of the comedy,” The Hollywood Reporter said when the first six-part season launched two years ago.

“This is a series that puts the laughs first but is always, as you find out, heading for something deeper. It just doesn’t marinate in it beyond all tolerance.”

Sian Clifford (Midsomer Murders), Olivia Colman (Broadchurch), Bill Paterson (Outlander), Hugh Skinner (The Windsors), Hugh Dennis (Outnumbered) and Ben Aldridge (Our Girl) co-star.

Also new to SoHo next month will be the third seasons of Versailles and Baskets, and the first of Our Cartoon President.

This will be the first time the Stephen Colbert-produced Trump ‘toon screens here in HD; it first streamed in SD on Sky’s on-demand platform.

SoHo also will premiere HBO’s movie-length adaptation of Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 and the documentary, King in the Wilderness, which chronicles the last three years of Martin Luther king’s life, from the passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1965 to his assassination in April 1968.

Fahrenheit 451 stars Michael B Jordan and Michael Shannon, and premieres next weekend on HBO; King in the Wilderness earned outstanding reviews when it bowed six weeks ago on HBO.

Screening in order of their transmission will be:

• Baskets S3 (9.30 Fridays from June 1)
• CB Strike (8.30 Thursdays from June 7)
• Fleabag (9.30 Thursdays from June 7)
• Our Cartoon President (10.00 Fridays from June 8)
• Versailles S3 (9.30 Tuesdays from June 12)
• Patrick Melrose (8.30 Tuesdays from June 19)
• Fahrenheit 451 (8.30 Wednesday, June 20)
• Little Women (8.30 Sundays from June 24)
• King in the Wilderness (8.30 Wednesday, June 27)

Box set weekends will include Versailles (S2), The Americans (S6), Silicon Valley (S5), Barry (S1), Billions (S3) and Britannia (S1).